Permanency Tip of the Week: Permanency in the Workplace
Last week, we talked about Permanency in the classroom. For our older Youth in foster care, one of the areas that Permanency can play a major role is in the workplace. When Youth can establish a mentor-like relationship with someone at work, they are more likely to feel supported, be more successful and respond better to adversity in the workplace. As professionals working with older Youth, we can both partner with the Youth as well as advocate on behalf of the Youth with their employers to help build these sorts of relationships in the workplace. A lasting benefit of our Youth experiencing Permanency in the workplace is that when they move onto new jobs, they can apply this experience to seeking out and creating new Permanent connections as well as utilize past Permanent connections as references.
Permanency Story of the Week: Positive Permanency
The commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services issues a call to action to CPS staff to find permanent homes for children and youth in foster care.
Current Permanency related articles:
Parent’s Corner – The Courage of Parenting with a History of Trauma
This is for all of you parents who lived through difficult childhoods, difficult years–through trauma (however you would define it), through neglect, through war—especially, but not necessarily, as children. This is for all of you who had to do whatever you needed to do to survive and now you are out on the other side. You made it with a lot of grit and effort. Your life is calm. It is good. And you are working hard as a parent to raise your children, whether they are toddlers, teens or young adults.
2015 Kids Count Databook Now Available
The Annie E. Casey Foundation has released The 2015 KIDS COUNT Data Book, an annual publication that assesses child well-being nationally and across the 50 states, as well as in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Using an index of 16 indicators, the report ranks states on overall child well-being and in economic well-being, education, health and family and community.
5-Part Series to Explore the Experience of Foster Children Living with Relatives
The Step-Up Coalition will be holding a five-part series of web seminars examining the experience of children in foster care living with relatives. The first web seminar will be on September 16, examining the plight of relative caregivers. This will be followed on October 21 with a web seminar on recruiting and retaining relatives and then on November 18 with an analysis of how the statewide Continuum of Care Reform will impact relative caregivers. The series continues into December with a web seminar on probation youth and kinship care on December and then comes to a conclusion on January 20 with a investigation of kinship diversion. Each web seminar will feature experts in the area of policy and practice.
From Foster Care to Founding Nonprofit ‘Acts of Random Kindness’
It’s unusual today for a 22-year-old to have a Master’s degree and to have founded a non-profit. It’s downright amazing if that young person spent much of her childhood homeless and hungry before spending her high school years in foster care in the city of Alexandria.
But, then again, Cordelia Cranshaw is no ordinary young woman. Petite with a tentative smile, her inner strength is palpable as she tells her story. She speaks with the confidence of someone who fully understands that the things she has survived don’t define her, rather they have helped her to become who she is today. To talk to her, you would never know that she ever has doubts about herself, her accomplishments or her future.
Brains of Abused Teenagers Show ‘Encouraging’ Ability to Regulate Emotions
Children who have been abused or exposed to other types of trauma typically experience more intense emotions than their peers, a byproduct of living in volatile, dangerous environments. But what if those kids could regulate their emotions? Could that better help them cope with difficult situations? Would it impact how effective therapy might be for them?
A University of Washington-led team of researchers sought to address those questions by studying what happens in the brains of maltreated adolescents when they viewed emotional images, and then tried to control their responses to them. The researchers found that with a little guidance, maltreated children have a surprising ability to regulate their emotions.
“They were just as able as other children to modulate their emotional responses when they were taught strategies for doing so,” said Kate McLaughlin, a UW assistant professor of psychology and the study’s lead author. “That’s very encouraging.”